1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a control method for the automatic pre-processing of device malfunctions. The invention also is directed to a system for implementation of the method.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A number of works steps usually are required following the report of a malfunction at a device by an operator of the device until the malfunction is eliminated by a service technician. At present, a malfunction registration by a malfunction service usually proceeds by the device operator first reporting the malfunction at the device to a service center of the malfunction service by telephone, for example to a service center of the device manufacturer. It is registered thereat by a service person responsible therefor and may be forwarded to a “pre-troubleshooter”. This person initially tries to determine whether a trivial problem exists that can be solved by the device operator with the assistance of telephone support. If such a telephonic solution is not possible, a service technician is ultimately dispatched who handles this malfunction and usually travels to the device operator and eliminates the malfunction on site. This manual registration of the malfunction is decidedly personnel-intensive and thus expensive. Moreover, it is also time-consuming. Especially in the case of expensive large-scale devices that preferably are used around the clock because of their high capital costs, malfunction-induced down times should be reduced as far as possible. In the event of a malfunction, it is therefore necessary that this be eliminated as fast as possible. This means that the times for the pre-processing of the malfunction, with the possible involvement of a service technician on site, also should be reduced to a minimum. This demand for a fast elimination of malfunctions is even more urgent for medical devices, particularly large-scale medical devices such magnetic resonance tomography systems, X-ray tomography systems or the like, for which there is usually no back-up at the place of use and the use of which is often life-sustaining. An outage of such a device therefore can have financial as well as medical significance.